


Another Time

by Artemis1000



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Identity Porn, M/M, Minor Cassian Andor/K-2SO, Slow Burn, Time Travel, Uneasy Allies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-22 18:48:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14314902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/pseuds/Artemis1000
Summary: Trapped in the Imperial Era, Poe and Kylo have to try and keep their heads down and keep from destroying the timeline - all the way figuring out how to work together as uneasy allies with a history of something more. Talk about awkward. Running into some childhood heroes is just the zherry on top.





	Another Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blueteak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueteak/gifts).



> I couldn't resist your Rogue One crossover prompt, I hope you enjoy!

“I can’t believe I’m helping Kylo Ren infiltrate the Rebel Alliance,” Poe groaned. “My parents would be ashamed of me.”

“We’re not infiltrating them. We’re just…”

Poe gave him a pointed look, just _daring_ Kylo to come up with some more socially acceptable term, yet to his disappointment, he trailed off and didn’t even try. Face darkening from dismay to grimness, Poe returned his attention to the glass of questionable homebrew he was pretending to nurse.

Some things never changed, such as seedy cantinas or the unpalatable liquor they served.

If his glass of moonshine weren’t quite so downright disgusting, Poe would have found the thought comforting. By the Force, it wasn’t as if he wouldn’t welcome some predictability in his life.

He looked towards Kylo Ren again, who didn’t look much like Kylo Ren at all in the tan smuggler outfit he wore to blend in years before his own birth. He still carried his lightsaber, though Poe had finally convinced him to keep it in his bag. It wasn’t like he would be able to ever use it in the era they were stranded in, not if he didn’t wish to risk doing such damage to the timeline that he might as well just kill them both and be done with it.

That had been the hardest lesson for both of them, and also the one which had turned them from enemies to reluctant allies: they may have been transported into the past when Kylo had activated the Sith temple and Poe had been sucked into the vortex, Kylo following after him, unwilling to let Poe have the prize he had sought, but in the end neither of them had won anything.

There was no winning by changing the past. Time protected itself, as their early attempts to change things had shown; it would destroy the cause of the aberration before it let itself be changed in any meaningful ways.

More than one innocent wall plating had fallen prey to Kylo’s fury before he accepted this truth as fact. Poe’s bitterness had been quieter but no less heartfelt.

It was just the zherry on top that all of this led to them being reunited, as if Ben Solo had never become Kylo Ren, never torn apart all tenderness that had once existed between them. That they spent every day since then in a truce which you could nearly fool yourself into thinking was more – and how his heart longed to be fooled… After three months in the past, Poe could admit to that, if only in the sanctity of his own mind.

“Now remember,” Poe said in an urgent whisper, “we’re meeting with hardened Rebel operatives, they’re going to be suspicious.”

“Don’t worry about me, Dameron,” Kylo grumbled, “worry about your own hero worship getting in the way.”

Poe gritted his teeth. Kylo was the last person to preach about the dangers of hero worship. Kylo, who had been Malachor-bent to run off and meet Darth Vader, or at least watch him from a distance, and nearly gotten himself wiped from the timeline when Vader sensed another powerful Dark presence in the Force where there should have been none.

It had been touch-and-go for a whole week, Poe wiping cool clothes over his burning-hot forehead as if that could change the fact that Kylo was turning alarmingly translucent, all the while wondering if he was a traitor to the Resistance for hoping Kylo would live. But he couldn’t do it alone. He didn’t want to do it alone, he had realized during this terrifying week. It hadn’t been his only realization, though the other was one he never planned to share with Kylo.

“Excuse me, is this seat taken?”

Poe sized up the man who stood by their table, a dark-haired human with a scruffy beard, wearing a blue parka with an amazingly fluffy hood.

Somehow, Poe had expected more of his first meeting with one of the famed Fulcrum agents that had featured in so many of his bedtime stories. The local counterpart to _by the light of Lothal’s moons_ or at least a secret handshake. That was if they actually warranted a Fulcrum agent, but if this human wasn’t Fulcrum for the Cassander sector, they would be kriffed. They needed someone with the actual authority to make the deal, not three more months of working their way through Rebel Alliance bureaucracy.

“Issajer Hallute. Nice to meet you.”

Poe exchanged a look with Kylo. They, unlike Fulcrum agents, didn’t need to worry about secret code phrases at all. They had Kylo, who should be able to sense in the Force whether the man was a Rebel agent or just an overly friendly barfly. Kylo gave the tiniest nod, and Poe found himself relaxing. This was it. Their plan was still on track.

He leaned forward, plastering a friendly smile on his face to match Fulcrum’s. “Muran Bey, and tall, dark and grumpy over there is Ben Prestor.”

Poe scrutinized Fulcrum’s face, waiting, hoping for some kind of response at the name _Bey_. He didn’t so much as bat an eyelash and Poe had to swallow down a wave of disappointment. He told himself it didn’t matter – it wasn’t like he could actually ask him if he knew Shara Bey, but just to have someone acknowledge that she was alive in this time, alive even if completely outside of Poe’s reach, would have been enough. Or maybe it would have just hurt more but it would have been worth the hurt.

The Fulcrum fell into easy chatter – about the weather, which was as unexciting as it always was on Minashee, about the orbital traffic, the long wait at customs.

Poe, used to keeping up appearances from his own undercover missions, easily kept up his part of the game while most of his attention was on the other patrons.

By the time Fulcrum was finally convinced that nobody was watching them, Poe was ready to second-guess Kylo’s judgment.

Fulcrum left first, Ben and Poe finishing their drinks – Poe pouring his out under the table – before they left, too.

The Fulcrum agent was waiting for them in the alley behind the cantina, and looming over him was…

Poe raised his hands and walked backward. “No no no no, forget it,” he ground out, “that was cute, but no.”

The Imperial droid looked at him with bright photoreceptors. It was one of these old-style KX droids Poe used to know from war museums and had lately been running from in real life. “You are displaying signs of panic,” he told Poe, and then, to the human he dwarfed, and had protectively placed himself in front of as soon as they approached, “I told you this would happen but you didn’t listen, and now I have a blaster pointed at me. You know I don’t like it when they shoot at me and I can’t shoot back.”

Imperial fake-Fulcrum placed a soothing hand on the middle of the droid’s back and squeezed himself between his frame and the wall to place himself in front of the droid. “You can take down that blaster, _Prestor_ ,” he barked. “If I wanted to sell you out you’d be in Force cuffs already.”

Poe looked over his own shoulder, to find that Kylo was indeed pointing a blaster – at the droid, oddly enough, not at the man. _The KX droid_. The pieces were rapidly falling into place in Poe’s mind, in a steady chant of _no no no_.

This could _not_ be the Fulcrum agent and the KX droid Poe was suspecting them to be. Didn’t he work in the Albarrio sector? Every history book Poe had ever read said he was Fulcrum for the Albarrio sector. And _they were not supposed to interfere with history_.

Kylo looked intensely at the man, there was something going on, maybe some reaching into the Force to sense his intentions, Poe would be kriffed if he truly understood how it worked, but after another long moment, he lowered his blaster. He didn’t put it away, and Poe could only hope that he wouldn’t shoot, no matter what. If they killed Cassian Andor and K-2SO before they could get the plans from Scarif…

“Talk fast.”

Fulcrum – Andor, it had to be Andor – shot him a glare. The friendliness from the cantina was all gone. “The droid’s with me. That’s all you need to know.” Poe noted absently that he still had his hand on the droid’s back.

“You know what we need.”

Andor nodded sharply. “I can get you the charts.”

As far as the Rebel Alliance knew, they were looking for hyperspace coordinates to a smuggler’s nest at the edge of Wild Space. Valuable enough to the Rebel Alliance that nobody short of a Fulcrum agent could trade for them, not yet so valuable that they wouldn’t trade at all.

“What do you have for us?”

Poe turned to Kylo, sharing another anxious look with him – anxious for two reasons now, though he couldn’t tell if Kylo shared the same fears. This was it. Their offer could be too insignificant to get them what they needed, or large enough that they would be wiped from the timeline for it. They could only hope, and trust in the Force, and also hope that they hadn’t changed the timeline just by meeting with Cassian Andor.

Poe’s hand didn’t shake when he handed over the datacard but he felt numb. “Double-check it. When you have confirmed it’s real, you know how to get in touch with us.”

Or maybe he would simply take the intel and vanish. Maybe it would be better if he did, there was no saying what could go wrong if they met with him again. What if he was meeting with them when he should have been meeting with the person who pointed him towards the Death Star? It would be another year until the battles of Scarif and Yavin but Poe didn’t know how long Andor had been pursuing information on it.

They were so kriffed.

Poe chanced a glance down at his hands, just to make sure he wasn’t vanishing already.

 

They said their goodbyes and parted ways in what passed as a haze for Poe, and then it was just him and Kylo back in their dingy room above another seedy cantina, where they could be reasonably sure not to be overheard.

“Do you know who that was?” he blurted out as soon as the door locked behind them.

Kylo sank onto the closest bed. It was Poe’s bed, but Poe couldn’t bring himself to care. “Cassian Jeron Andor and K-2SO from Rogue One.” His lips twisted into a sneer. “I _did_ grow up a victory child, you know.”

Poe’s lips thinned. “Don’t remind me.” Of how he had had everything, and fallen so far anyway.

In all the months they had been trapped together, Poe had never dared ask why or how. He had been too frightened to learn Kylo had no proper answer at all. He had been too frightened, too, that Ben had simply found something more valuable to him than Poe’s love.

He sank onto the bed next to Kylo and buried his face in his hands. “We haven’t been wiped. I guess we didn’t kill the entire galaxy… yet.”

Kylo shot him a disgruntled look. “ _You_ wanted to ask the Rebel Alliance. We could have gotten these coordinates from a dozen smuggler syndicates.”

“No, we could have tried to get them from a dozen syndicates before coming across one which has them. I know for a fact the rebels have them, Mom’s going to help build an outpost there.”

He peered at Kylo. They had never spoken of his family, beyond that one Darth Vader disaster. That his other grandparents were still alive on Alderaan, his father still out there living a scoundrel’s life.

“I still can’t believe we met two Rogue One heroes,” Poe said.

“I can’t believe we’re so close to getting home,” Kylo answered.

Poe scowled before pushing his annoyance aside. “Yeah. That…”

Another thing they had never spoken of was what would happen once they were home, or even when they got to the temple that would take them home. Would both of them be passing through the archway or would their truce be off as soon as they reached the Sith temple? Maybe it was better not to know.

“Are you afraid what I’ll do to you when we get back,” Kylo stood up, and deliberately added, “Poe?”

Poe clenched his teeth against the shiver running down his spine. Yeah, it really would have been better to stay away from this topic. “No,” he ground out. No, he wasn’t afraid; no, he wasn’t affected by Kylo finally calling him by his first name after all these years.

“Then you’re a fool.”

“Seriously?!” He leaped to his feet, getting right in Kylo’s face with his hands balled at his sides and kriff being cautious, he was tired of being cautious and being the bigger man. He had held his tongue to make things work far too often over the past months. “We don’t even have the charts yet and you’re already back to playing the big bad wannabe Sith?”

He couldn’t even pinpoint what exactly made him so furious about this situation but he suspected strongly that there was a lot of betrayal mixed in there.

For a while, he had really let himself believe that Kylo had changed.

“Don’t,” Kylo growled, his face twisted in anger.

He crossed what little distance remained between them, bringing them right chest to chest, but Poe would be damned if he backed down now. No, he’d backed down far too often. All he did was tilt up his chin and hold his gaze, unflinching. “Or what?”

He still didn’t flinch when Kylo grabbed him by his lapels, he refused to. He kept refusing to flinch when he growled, “I haven’t become _weak_.”

What he did do was laugh, bitterly. “You didn’t have to. You’ve been weak all along. Or do you really think it’s strength crawling back to Snoke after you’ve done just fine being your own master for three months? You know you’ve only ever been a tool to him.”

Maybe, no, most certainly it was a dirty trick to use what he had learned during Kylo’s fever dreams against him. If it was so, Poe couldn’t bring himself to feel any regret. They were both running out of time.

He placed his hand over Kylo’s, fingers lingering there for a wistful moment before he pried his grip loose. That he permitted it, didn’t even snap and growl at Poe anymore, was his only admission of how shaken he was. It wasn’t much; Poe took it as a victory anyway.

 

“What are _you_ doing here?!”

Cassian Andor responded to Poe’s yelp with a confused scowl or as much of one as he could manage with half his face bruised and swollen.

Poe quickly peeked around the corner of the alley before returning to his scrutiny of Andor. “And what happened to you? Did you go a round with a rampaging rancor?”

The spy gritted his teeth, looking for a moment like he had something very unflattering to say before settling on, “Doesn’t matter.” K-2SO stepped a little closer to him, he moved his arm as if he wanted to place a hand on Cassian’s shoulder before he thought better of it. Before Poe could protest the non-answer or Kylo could complain about Poe wasting time, he added, “I have your charts.”

He could feel, more than hear Kylo’s sigh of relief. “Finally,” he huffed, but still kept his distance from Andor and his droid companion.

Poe shot him a concerned look. He had been sullen and taciturn all week, but it hadn’t gone unnoticed by Poe that he had left the lead to him already the last time they met their Rebel contact. It wasn’t like Kylo to defer to someone else’s superior expertise.

When Andor pulled the datacard from an inside pocket of his parka, Poe saw that his left arm was mostly limp and useless and when he looked closely he could spy the edge of a bacta patch lurking out from underneath his sleeve.

He really looked like he had gone a round with a rancor and once again, Poe cursed that they had ended up with him of all contacts. He shouldn’t have been here, he should have been recovering from whatever mission had seen him injured. What if he went on his next mission fatally ill-prepared?

Poe’s fingers had just barely touched the datacard when the first blaster bolt whizzed past his ear.

He grasped the precious card and shifted it to his left hand while his right went for his blaster.

They were already running, all four of them, and shooting back, all three of them.

It was too bad there were a whole lot more Stormtroopers than there were of them.

“We must have been tailed from Mygeeto!” Andor wheezed as he pressed himself against a wall and quickly ducked around the corner to shoot.

“I told you to rest and send someone else,” K-2SO said. “But you insisted we meet them ourselves.” He didn’t have a blaster, he looked very large and very frustrated to Poe.

“Why doesn’t your droid have a blaster?” he asked as he took position across from Andor.

“See?” K-2SO piped up. “Even the highly suspicious smugglers say I should have one.”

“Not now, Kay!” Andor snapped at the same time as Kylo bristled, “I’m not a smuggler!”

“Not now, Kylo!” Poe echoed.

It was back to running. Running. Shooting. Running again.

They were being herded. They knew it, all four of them, but they couldn’t do a thing about it.

When he had the opportunity, K-2SO grabbed a Stormtrooper unfortunate enough to be ahead of his compatriots, hauled him up by an arm and threw him into his comrades like a rumble-pins ball. They toppled beautifully, one after the other. It was the highlight of Poe’s day but five Stormtroopers more or less wouldn’t make much of a difference in the long run.

It ended as these things usually did for Poe; boxed in, solid too-high-to-scale walls to three sides of him and a solid white wall of Stormtroopers to the fourth.

“Oh come on, pals, isn’t this growing a little old?” he groaned.

“Surrender or you will be eliminated,” the lead Stormtrooper demanded.

Poe looked at Kylo. Kylo had been good, he had stuck to the blaster. Something told him that wasn’t going to last much longer. There was a wild look in his eyes.

He stepped forward, hands raised in surrender. “Come on,” he said again, “I’m sure we can talk this out. It’s just a misunderstanding, promise…”

He took another step. One too far, he realized exactly in the moment the Stormtrooper’s finger pulled the trigger.

An invisible wave smashed into the lead Stormtrooper, slamming him back into his comrades much like when K-2SO had been playing rumble-pins with the bucketheads.

There was a new wave of blaster fire, and at some point, K-2SO must have acquired grenades for he was now cheerfully peppering the phalanx of Stormtroopers.

They used the break in their formation to run.

“So why did you come yourself?” Poe asked as they ran, briskly ignoring Kylo’s incredulous, “ _That_ has you concerned?!”

“I didn’t trust anyone else to follow through on the deal,” Andor grumbled. He sounded like he regretted his everything.

They threw themselves into the tiny crevice between two buildings, just in time for the Stormtroopers to pass them by. Andor sank to the ground, wheezing, and K-2SO ran his fingers through his hair with infinite gentleness, speaking to him too quietly for Poe to hear over the pounding of Stormtrooper boots.

An acute pang of longing shot through Poe, so strong that it _hurt_. Without conscious decision, his eyes searched for Kylo. He was pale and wide-eyed, breathing heavily, and keeping a solid one and a half arm’s length distance from Poe – yet he had placed himself between Poe and everything that threatened them, just like he always did when they were running and hiding. He still looked like a wild, hunted thing about to lash out… or remember that he carried a lightsaber.

“We should split up,” Poe whispered.

Cassian nodded sharply. His face was pinched with pain. “You go first.”

Poe hesitated. “I…” This was his first, last chance to speak to one of the heroes of his childhood stories. His mouth felt dry and he couldn’t think of a single thing to say that wasn’t _tell_ _my Mom I love her_. “Thanks,” he choked out and then Kylo was yanking at his arm, dragging him away in the small window they had between Stormtrooper patrols.

The next time they saw Cassian Andor and K-2SO, they would be seven and nine years old and admiring their blurry blue holograms at the war museum.

 

“So. That’s it then.” So long, and thanks for nothing, Poe almost said but swallowed back the bitterness for the closest he could come to a neutral expression.

They were standing in a Sith temple, not unlike the one where their journey had begun, in front of a faintly glowing stone arch that looked _eerily_ like the one that had gotten them into this mess.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and averted his eyes. He nudged at a loose tile with the tip of his boot.

“We have been in the past for three and a half months. I’m about ready to go home.” Because whatever mixed feelings he had about Kylo and the truce that would be over as soon as they stepped through that portal, Poe had a war to fight, he had people who depended on him. He was about ready to get back to a time where he could be an actor, not just a helpless spectator.

It was just… everything else that gave him mixed feelings. And that everything else, that was his problem, right? He could deal with that by himself.

“Yes,” Kylo said weakly, and Poe’s eyes flickered towards him. After months of Kylo being fierce and driven to find a way back and Poe constantly needing to temper him in his ends-justify-the-means impatience, Poe could read doubt in his eyes. No, not doubt, but uncertainty. Some kind of hesitation which he was loathe to explore further. False hope was a dangerous thing, especially when you were faced with a once-and-soon-to-be-again enemy.

The archway’s dim glow grew to a melting-hot red.

Poe felt his heartbeat speed up. This was it. Now or never. He nudged harder at the cracked tile and one corner of it came free. If there was anything other than fear of his master’s wrath to Kylo’s hesitation, if there was anything to the past months at all…

Now or never, he reminded himself and straightened his back. His parents hadn’t raised a coward, had they?

“We don’t have to go back to acting like nothing has changed,” he said, and yet his voice came out quieter, more hesitant than he had intended. Still a good way off from the confidence he had aimed for. Maybe he’d recover that once he was back in his own time. Or maybe he’d just have to accept that he’d always been a mess around Ben Solo – it used to be for better, sweeter reasons, even. “These months happened. They’re real.”

And once they went back, would they feel like a fever dream while they each slotted seamlessly back into their old lives? But would they still fit into the empty space they’d left behind?

Poe wanted to believe that Kylo wouldn’t, that he couldn’t go back to being the monster in a mask that had ordered a whole village slaughtered as if it didn’t matter to him at all. He’d gone for three months being a mostly decent person. That had to count for something, right? It wasn’t like he had gone out of his way to save Loth-kittens or anything but… he hadn’t been awful. He still had it in him to be not-awful, at the very least.

Poe rubbed a hand over his face and gave a choked laugh. “Force, I’m pathetic.”

He felt more than heard Kylo approach and then there were hands on his face, brushing away his own hand. Kylo hadn’t gone back to wearing gloves. They’d both lost the clothes they arrived in months ago. They’d be returning looking like the Imperial-era scoundrels they’d pretended to be.

“You,” Kylo’s face was all scrunched up in deep concentration, it looked like he was fighting a losing battle against himself, “you are not pathetic.”

His hands were calloused but his grip was surprisingly gentle as he held Poe’s face cradled in his large hands. Poe’s heart was pounding again.

Poe smiled wryly. “That’s optimistic.”

Very optimistic, even, for he was absolutely certain it was pathetic that he was reaching for Kylo now, placing his hands on his shoulders and not quite pulling him down, but certainly… not averse to it. Absolutely not averse to it, just a little bit too wounded and skittish still to go all out. He’d always been far more cautious in matters of love than war.

The portal opened and bathed them in red.

“You could stay,” Poe offered, yet he knew Kylo wouldn’t stay even before he shook his head.

He would have to learn for himself if he still fit into his old life, this wasn’t a realization Poe or time travel could make for him. He would have to make a _choice_.

Poe understood. He gulped audibly and tried not to feel too hurt. “There’s a way back. When…” no he wouldn’t appreciate the assumption of _when you’re ready_ , “if you want it.”

Kylo was still scrutinizing Poe as intently as if he could find all the answers on his face. “With you?” He had probably tried for scornful. It sounded more hopeful to Poe’s own far too hopeful ears.

Would it? This was a realization Poe would make for himself, once he was back and facing the realities of all the hurt Kylo Ren had caused. Then and only then would he be able to tell if he could move past that. He couldn’t promise it now, no matter how much he wished he could. So he just smiled and ran his fingers through Kylo’s hair. “I liked us being on the same side again. We’re a good team.”

Kylo gave a tiny nod. Respecting Poe’s boundaries was a skill he had learned over the past months. “We are. I liked it.”

The portal flickered and bulged, red shadows danced over the walls of the temple chamber.

They shared an alarmed look.

Now or never.

Kylo released Poe first and turned to the portal.

And Poe? He didn’t know what the future would bring, but he knew one thing with startling clarity at this moment: He couldn’t leave it at that. If he did, he would forever regret it.

Poe was acting purely on instinct as he reached for Kylo and yanked him back, pressing a quick, harsh kiss to his lips before he released him again so he could step – now, in his confusion, stumble – through the portal.

The confusion mingled with hope – and longing, so much longing – in his eyes was the last thing Poe saw before red swallowed up Kylo Ren, and two steps later Poe as well.


End file.
